Some homemade chicken soup inspired these fluffy corn muffins. Dave spent the whole day making soup, and at the last minute I decided I’d better whip up something to go with it. I poked around on Pinterest until I found a recipe that looked simple and quick.
Corn muffins can be tricky. The best way to make them delicious is to load them up with butter, which I try to avoid, but if you skip the butter, you end up with something nasty, and everyone nibbles at it politely and then discretely crumbles it up into the nearest garbage can. So I took a gamble, based partly on the recipe, and partly on the word “fluffy” in the title. Aspirational! I like that.
Next time I’ll reduce the sugar slightly, but all in all, these muffins are delicious. They’re soft and fluffy instead of heavy and dense like cornbread, with a lovely flavor, but they were just a very little bit sweeter than they needed to be, given their role as a dinner muffin.
Dry ingredients first: whole wheat white flour, wheat germ, cornmeal (yellow, since it’s what I had on hand), baking powder, and salt.
Butter and sugar next.
Milk and coconut oil made things look a little gloppy.
The beaten eggs didn’t help much.
The batter looked lumpy and unpleasant, even when I added the first portion of the flour mixture, and I admit I had my doubts about how things were going to turn out.
It doesn’t look very nice, does it? But once all the flour was added, the batter started to take shape. It was light and rather airy.
I scooped the batter into muffin tins, and had enough left over for a very mini mini-loaf. (I have a few disposable mini-mini-loaf containers around from an old splurge on the King Arthur Flour site.) I popped them in the oven, checked in 15 minutes later, and they were done.
I gave them 5 minutes in the pan, then moved them to a rack to cool.
I was very nervous about these muffins, as I wanted them to be worthy of Dave’s soup and we didn’t actually have anything else to fall back on for dinner, but I needn’t have been. They are wonderful! Soft, fluffy, flavorful, and perfect.
FLUFFY CORN MUFFINS RECIPE (original)
My version of Fluffy Corn Muffins (adapted from Peas & Crayons)
makes 12 muffins and one small mini loaf
ingredients:
1 1/3 cups whole wheat white flour
1/3 cup wheat germ
2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/3 cup cane sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup 1% milk
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 large eggs, beaten
directions:
Heat oven to 375 degrees, you will reduce the temperature later. Spray or line a 12-cup muffin tin and a small mini-loaf holder.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, wheat germ, cornmeal, baking powder, and sea salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the sugar and butter. Add the milk and oil, and mix well. Add the beaten eggs, and mix again. Batter will be lumpy and odd-looking.
Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and use a spatula to mix just until combined. The batter will be light and airy.
Scoop batter into muffin tins and mini loaf pan. Place in oven and reduce temperature to 350 degrees.
Bake for 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean. Give them five more minutes in the pan, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.
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